[BCNnet] Re: [fpfriends] from today's daily southtown

[Dennis Nyberg]

I can remember a case similar to that described in the article and I have 
seen micro-marijuana farms at Cranberry Slough Nature Preserve.
Sometime in the early 90s there was a police raid at the NW corner of 
Willow Springs Rd and 123rd St., i.e. within Cap Sauers Holdings. Deb Petro 
and I and one or two other Palos Restoration Project people went out to 
look about a week after the raid. We found room size patches within a shrub 
"jungle" that had been cleared - all woody and herbaceous vegetation cut 
and carried to the edge of the patch. There was evidence of herbicide use. 
Within the cleared area the soil had been turned over and mounds had been 
created. Presumably these mounds held the marijuana plants that the police 
destroyed. We visited at least a few patches. They were separated from each 
other by at least 100 feet. They were in an area it was very difficult to 
move around in.
At Cranberry Slough I have discovered marijuana 2 or 3 times. In those 
cases, a patch about 3 feet on a side would have been dug up and 2 to 4 
marijuana plants would be in the disturbed area. One time they dug up 
Sporobolus heterolepis, which really made me mad. I never found more than a 
few of these patches at a time, so the scale was much less than a Cap 
Sauers. After the large 1999 wildfire a couple patches were discovered on a 
workday. The FPD supervisor left his business card at our discovery. Most 
of the plantings at CSNP have occurred after fires and I have speculated 
that local cultivators may be responsible for some of the wildfires. This 
is not inconsistent with the comment below. Open woods do allow individuals 
to see better and large operations such as that described for Cap Sauers 
would be readily detected in a more open woods. Small patches such as those 
I detected at CSNP are probably not detectable from the air and are 
detected on foot only when one is right up at the patch. Fire often results 
in luxuriant growth of annual and biennial species.
One final comment -I have never detected bobbie traps (such as one reads 
about in CA) at the patches I have seen.
Dennis Nyberg
At 06:17 PM 9/18/2003 -0500, Peter Dring wrote:
>The last pot "bust" I remember was near 95th street and turned out to be a
>field of tickseed sunflower
>----- Original Message -----
>From: <Johngsheerin@aol.com>
>To: <fpfriends@yahoogroups.com>
>Sent: Thursday, September 18, 2003 4:45 PM
>Subject: [fpfriends] from today's daily southtown
>
>
> > Note, well managed woodlands are burned and more open so this kind of
>criminal activity is not prevalent.
> >